Question
by Scarabbug
Summary: A strange man walks up to the TARDIS as bold as brass and waltzes into the console room... Honestly, Amy curses herself, what had she been expecting? A friendly chat and some biscuits? Minor spoilers for Season five and Torchwood CoE. One shot.


**Title**: Question  
**Fandom**: Doctor Who  
**Disclaimer**: Not mine, take no credit, earn no fee.  
**Pairing/Characters**: Amy Pond, Jack Harkness, Eleventh Doctor  
**Warnings**: Maybe some for Doctor Who season five, amongst others, but they're very vague.  
**Summary**: A strange man walks up to the TARDIS as bold as brass and waltzes into the console room... Honestly, Amy curses herself, what had she been expecting? A friendly chat and some biscuits? _**Minor season five spoilers and Torchwood Children of earth. **_One shot.  
**Writer's Note**: Written not long after I saw _Victory of the Daleks_, not that this is relevant.

* * *

There's a strange man on board the TARDIS.

Well, _besides _the usual one, that is. She ended up following him, the way she seems to end up following many strange people these days, because he'd been acting so strangely and seemed so harassed about something. She was unprepared for where they ended up.

He'd known where they were. That was the first surprise. He had known exactly where the TARDIS stood, disguised between two large, metal containers, in construction yard on a planet whose name she can't pronounce but which, in the Doctor's opinion, does the best tea in the known universe. He stands there with his fingers presed against the dark blue panelling, and the ship seemed to shudder beneath his touch, before hesitantly opening her doors. The strange man stepped inside as if it were his own front door.

Well, Amy figured she was justified in being a bit confused. The TARDIS didn't just allow random people on the street to step inside of her, or even _notice_ her for that matter. There were days when she didn't even feel like letting the _Doctor _back inside, and he'd have to sweet-talk her into it. Amy always smiles when she remembers the time he'd had to coo at the ship for about ten minutes, promising her new parts and a trip to _Cardiff _of all places, before the TARDIS had grudgingly unlocked her doors. Sighing, Amy picked up the packet of tea she'd been carrying (typical; an exotic alien planet, millions of light years from earth, and he lands them in a _construction yard _and talks her into fetching _tea_... Amy knows she should probably have expected this from a man who considers Fish Custard a delicacy) and followed.

And then all hell had broken loose.

Naturally. A strange man walks up to the TARDIS as bold as brass, convinces it to open the door for him without his speaking a word, and then waltzes into the console room where the Doctor is still tinkering... Honestly, Amy curses herself, what had she been _expecting_? A friendly chat and some biscuits? Well. The TARDIS had been thoughtful enough to provide the biscuits, but that felt a bit like a confused child offering a sticking plaster to a man who's just had his arm ripped off: noble enough, but ultimately useless.

A few minutes later, and Amy honestly felt like _somebody_ was going to lose limbs.

If his face hadn't been twisted by so much rage, Amy would have called the strange man handsome. As it happens, she'll just settle for strange. He talks to the Doctor as if he's known him for eternity, speaking quietly at first, then louder, and sharper than most people dare. The look on the Doctor's face is the same as it was when they visited Starship UK and found them torturing an alien, only without the anger. The strange man has more than enough fury for both of them.

Their conversation is a prequel to something worse, filled with references she doesn't understand, comments about aliens she's never heard of, and numbers. One question the strange, almost-handsome man asks the Doctor over and over –one Amy can understand very well, because she's asked him it herself so many times, throughout her childhood, when he wasn't there to hear her– is "Why?"

That's when the Doctor asks her to leave. Go exploring, he says. See if you can find the swimming pool, or the kitchen, or the room where he keeps the confiscated alien technology... Do _anything_, he says, so long as she doesn't do it here.

She knows things must be serious now, because she does exactly as he says. This isn't like her at all. She wanders around the library, aware that she can smell chlorine in the spines of books. She tries to follow the smell to find the swimming pool, but fails (she does track down a rather nice fountain though. God only knew what _that_ was doing on board a dimensionally infinite spaceship). Then she spends what feels like an hour and is probably more like ten minutes in the wardrobe room, investigating different types of shoes, some of which are clearly designed for people without toes.

That's as long as Amt can stand to wait, before her nerves and curiosity get the better of her. There's a stranger in the TARDIS, after all. Does the Doctor honestly expect her to stay away?

When Amy returns to the console room, she finds herself standing outside of the door and gripping the wall behind her. She can't hear what they're saying exactly and isn't sure she wants to. The ice-cold snappiness in the control room has turned to yelling, turned to screaming. The Doctor doesn't scream, because he never has to. He frightens people with barely a whisper, and yet this man is unafraid of him. He responds to the Doctor's cold urgency with a mirror image of heat and accusation, and the TARDIS is drinking it in, the conflict filling her like poison.

Amy shudders as she realises that the tension in the air is a bit too real. A bit too frightening. She remembers what the Doctor told her, about the TARDIS seeping into your brain, and realises that she has felt this pain before. This is exactly how the world felt after her parents died, when everything was just one big, moving mass of bewilderment and pain.

The TARDIS is talking to her the only way it knows how. She's trying to explain everything to Amy via simple feelings, because that was how her human mind best comprehended these things. But it's still a mostly useless exercise, because there's not even the TARDIS can explain everything Amy wants to know about this strange, angry man and their Doctor.

The last thing Amy hears, the thing which convinces her that _right_, enough is enough, she's going bloody well down there, is the sound of a body thumping against metal, as if somebody had just been punched. She is just flying down the flight of steps to the console room, ready to break up... something, when she sees them.

They're not fighting. Nobody has been punched, and neither of them is yelling. Instead, the strange man is pushed against a wall, wrapped up in something which looks less like a hug and more like somebody hanging on in a hurricane. His eyes are bright with shock and remorse, as if this was the last thing he ever expected. All the same, he's soon clinging back and shaking as if he might fall apart. The anger has slipped from his face now, and the pain left behind makes him seem both young and ancient. She can't see the Doctor's face, but he looks the same. She knows this without having to see.

The TARDIS seems to relax ever so slightly (how she's aware of a ship relaxing, Amy will never know), but the air is still cold and feels as taut as elastic.

There is silence for a while, then repeated, muffled apologies, being spoken over and over until they lose all meaning, if they even had any meaning in the first place. She isn't sure who's apologising to whom. Maybe it goes both ways. It's followed by a wretched sobbing that almost isn't _human_. All of that feeling, coming from just one man... She wonders if the TARDIS feels as overwhelmed by it as she does.

She remembers exchanges like this in her childhood, in the aftermath of family disasters (except that those arguments could never have been like _this_). It's the kind of pained reassurance exchanged between people who aren't quite sure what's right anymore; something intimate and private and which cannot be observed.

Amy leaves as quietly as she can, and doesn't disturb either of them again for another six hours.

_End. _


End file.
